Chapter 4
Chapter 4
The modest dinner, prepared with our family’s best efforts, was more lively than expected.
Cassis, perhaps having rested a bit, sat at the table with a much more refreshed face.
However, the hint of exhaustion behind his expression was unavoidable.
“So, Your Grace came down here alone?”
“I came with one aide, but well… He’s probably avoiding the rain well enough on his own.”
Cassis glanced out the window and shrugged.
Just then, the system chimed again.
Ding!
[SYSTEM | Calculation complete! Please check your rewards and next quest!]
Ah, geez.
It’s really being annoying.
The conversation at the dinner table was mainly led by Ijin.
I watched their exchange, occasionally adding a comment.
Cassis laughed often during the conversation, sometimes responding kindly.
Seeing him occasionally make jokes, I looked at this world’s male protagonist with slightly curious eyes.
Ding! Ding!
[SYSTEM | Calculation complete! Please check your rewards and next quest!]
[SYSTEM | Calculation complete! Please check your rewards and next quest!]
‘Okay, okay. I’ll check. I’ll check it.’
With the system filling my vision, I finally had no choice but to check it.
[SYSTEM | ‘Irina Seike’ has successfully repaid all debts.]
[SYSTEM | As a reward, we present you with the ‘Egg of Seilun’.]
No sooner had those words ended that a huge egg, like that of an ostrich, appeared with a ‘whoosh’ in my arms.
I caught the egg I almost dropped and looked around with bewildered eyes.
Fortunately, it seemed the others hadn’t noticed.
Ijin was asking Cassis various questions in a friendly manner.
‘What is this?’
[Ahem. I stole it from my brother’s nest to give to you! How is it?!]
[He really almost died trying to steal this 8$*lk@$ㅏ.]
But seriously, what is this?
[It’s a divine beast. If you raise it well and hatch it, a unique divine beast will be born.]
‘So what’s good about that?’
[A special… totem?]
“Are ostrich-like eggs very expensive?”
At my murmur, both Cassis and Ijin’s gazes turned to me simultaneously.
I hugged the large egg tightly to my chest and smiled brightly.
“Do you know by any chance?”
“…Well, I’m not sure?”
“That’s a shame.”
[Irina… You can’t sell that.]
“What, what is that egg?”
“Do you know about Seilun?”
“…I know it as a divine beast from mythology.”
So it does exist somewhere.
[Irina? Can you hear me?]
“It’s said to be the egg of Seilun.”
At my answer, Cassis’s eyes widened.
His red eyes reflected the light, shimmering for a moment before disappearing.
“…Did you purchase it?”
“No, I received it as some kind of reward.”
As I smiled slightly and cut the meat with my knife, red juice dripped down.
The chef had bought high-quality meat to celebrate paying off all our debts, I was told.
Our Cassis is lucky too.
If he had come yesterday instead of today, he would have eaten boiled potatoes.
[Irina. That’s really valuable.]
‘How is it valuable?’
[…Its characteristics change depending on how you take care of the egg. A dragon might be born, or something like a cat might be born.]
Oh.
For a system, it gave quite a good thing.
[But if you do it wrong, something like a mosquito might be born.]
[A giant mosquito.]
‘Are you crazy?’
I need to get rid of it immediately.
“But it feels like I might have been scammed.”
“Yes, I think so too.”
Cassis nodded.
[It’s not a scam, I tell you!]
‘When does it hatch?’
[We don’t know either.]
‘If a mosquito or fly might be born, do I really need to keep this child in my arms?’
[It might hatch tomorrow, or in 10 years, or maybe even in 100 years.]
Instead of answering, I just sighed deeply and handed the large egg to the butler waiting behind me.
Even so, it was quite heavy for a divine beast’s egg.
If it takes 100 years to hatch, it might be better to think of it as not my egg at all.
Cassis looked at the ostrich-like egg disappearing in the butler’s arms with pitying eyes.
Fortunately, the atmosphere wasn’t as gloomy as in the afternoon reception room.
* * *
While I was grumbling at the system, the Seike mansion received another guest.
After finishing dinner and moving to the reception room to sip wine, someone started banging on the mansion door.
As it happened to be a night with lightning and pouring rain, I naturally couldn’t help but feel tense.
Moreover, our family doesn’t even have a proper knight right now.
Of course, I glanced at Cassis while thinking this.
Hoping that if a problem arose, he would fight for us.
“Your Grace! How could you leave me behind?”
“You found your way here well.”
“If I die away from home, will you take responsibility?”
But the visitor was Cassis’s aide.
Cassis didn’t even snort at his aide’s reaction.
“If you die away from home in this warm south, you’d be unworthy of being a northerner.”
He seemed quite capable in the game, but judging by his inability to escape from bankruptcy, he might not be that capable after all.
After grumbling a few words to his superior, he changed his expression and smiled brightly at me.
“By the way, pleased to meet you. Lady Irina Seike, and Lord Seike. I’m Roen Blende, the Grand Duke’s chief aide and now his only aide. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“…About me?”
Why me?
The Blende family is one of the prominent families active in politics.
Even though we’re both count families, they’re on a different level from our declining family.
Among them, Roen Blende, as the second son of the Blende family, was known to have entered the Grand Duke’s household, pledging loyalty to Cassis rather than inheriting his family.
Why does such a person know about me and say he’s heard a lot about me?
“Of course. The story of how you revived a declining family in just 5 years is famous.”
I was that famous, huh.
Well, a barely twenty-something-year-old reviving a bankrupt count’s family?
Even I would be interested at first.
I laughed and offered Roen Blende a seat in the reception room.
The butler brought him a wine glass and poured him some of the wine that I, Ijin, and Cassis were drinking together.
With brown hair and green eyes, he raised his wine glass slightly with a friendly face, savored the aroma, and took a sip.
“So this is the famous Seike wine.”
“It’s also the wine that helped us pay off our debts.”
“It’s my first time tasting it, but the flavor is indeed excellent.”
Hmm.
I delayed my response for a moment and smiled slightly.
Originally, the Count Seike family had a very small winery that only distributed to our territory and the nearby area.
It wasn’t our main industry, and we only operated it just enough to avoid making a loss.
I heard my great-grandfather on my mother’s side loved wine and ran the winery himself.
Well, Seike must have been wealthy back then.
However, when the family went bankrupt, and we were selling off pieces of the family businesses, this winery couldn’t be sold due to some contract that had been passed down since our ancestors’ time.
<…Should we just drink it ourselves?>
<If it was a bakery, we could at least make bread to eat. What use is wine when we have nothing to eat.>
<…At least we’re fortunate we didn’t sell the vineyard.>
<We couldn’t sell it anyway.>
As I was wondering what to do with this neglected winery, I realized that this place had a tradition and could consistently produce quite good quality wine.
From the perspective of someone who had indulged in the pleasure of spending money on wine in the 21st century Earth, from cheap wines to bottles costing 3-400 million won, this was revolutionary.
‘My past life’s money wasn’t wasted after all!’
Although this world has magic and its own developments, for someone like me who had fully utilized the conveniences of modern civilization, there were many aspects of this world that left much to be desired.
For example, the finest items made by master craftsmen were as good as those in modern times.
But everything else was crude in comparison to what I used in my past life.
Food, clothes, living standards… It was the same in all these areas.
Wine was also in this category.
‘It seems difficult to catch up with the top-quality ones technologically, and it’s hard to enter that market.’
So I aimed to use this winery to produce above-average wine cheaply, and establish Seike wine as a mid-to-low price brand.
[You haven’t forgotten that we helped, right?]
Of course, there was help from the system.
As a result, Ijin, the system, and I were able to successfully export mid-to-low priced wine to the southeastern, central, and northern parts of the empire where wine wasn’t produced.
Although we were cursed in social circles for not knowing the dignity and honor of nobility, targeting the majority middle class rather than the minority privileged class was the core of our business.
Currently, Seike wine is one of the most common and affordable wines available in the empire.
So it wouldn’t have suited the tastes of the Grand Duke and his aide who had likely only enjoyed the best since childhood.
But Roen praised the wine, saying it was delicious, and sought agreement from Cassis.
Cassis slowly nodded at his aide’s urging.
“Thank you.”
Instead of being modest, I briefly expressed my thanks and adjusted my posture.
The Grand Duke elegantly savored the wine that could be bought for just 20 jurang.
He looked as if our Seike wine was worth 200 jurang.
If given the chance, I wanted to paint a promotional portrait with the Grand Duke holding our wine.
Or have him drink it at a famous party.
Surely some families would be deceived by the Grand Duke’s elegant demeanor and buy our wine or invest in us.
Ding-!
[SYSTEM | Main Quest ‘Prevent the Empire’s Destruction’ has arrived.]
I had forgotten for a moment, but another persistent quest notification came.
I checked the quest once more with trembling pupils.
‘Can I really not refuse this?’
[No.]
[It would be a big problem.]
Unaware of my distress, Cassis was just sipping his wine.
Hey, male lead.
The debt you incurred is because of me.
And now they’re saying I have to pay it off.
Does this make any sense?
[That’s how it turned out.]
[That’s what they say.]
